Mountain warfare refers to warfare in the mountains or similarly rough terrain. This type of warfare is also called Alpine warfare, after the Alps mountains. Mountain warfare is one of the most dangerous types of combat as it involves surviving not only combat with the enemy but also the extreme weather and dangerous terrain.

Mountain ranges are of strategic importance since they often act as a natural border, and may also be the origin of a water source (e.g. Golan Heights – water conflict). Attacking a prepared enemy position in mountain terrain requires a greater ratio of attacking soldiers to defending soldiers than a war conducted on level ground.[1] Mountains at any time of year are dangerous – lightning, strong gusts of wind, rock falls, avalanche, snow pack, ice, extreme cold, glaciers with their crevasses and the general uneven terrain and the slow pace of troop and material movement are all additional threats to combatants. Movement, reinforcements, and medical evacuation up and down steep slopes and areas where even pack animals cannot reach involves an enormous exertion of energy.

The term mountain warfare is said to have come about in the Middle Ages after the monarchies of Europe found it difficult to fight the Swiss armies in the Alps. This was because the Swiss were able to fight in smaller units and took vantage points against a huge unmaneuverable army. Similar styles of attack and defence were later employed by guerrillas, partisans and irregulars who hid in the mountains after an attack, making it challenging for an army of regulars to fight back; in Bonaparte's Italian campaign, and the 1809 rebellion in Tyrol, mountain warfare played a large role.

Mountain warfare came to the fore once again during World War I, when some of the nations involved in the war had mountain divisions that had hitherto not been tested, the Austro-Hungarian defence repelled Italian attacks as they took advantage of the mostly mountainous terrain in the Julian Alps and the Dolomites, where frostbite and avalanches proved deadlier than bullets. During the summer of 1918, the Battle of San Matteo took place on the Italian front; this battle was fought at the highest elevation of any in the war. In December 1914, another offensive was launched by the Turkish supreme commander Enver Pasha with 95,000–190,000 troops against the Russians in the Caucasus. Insisting on a frontal attack against Russian positions in the mountains in the heart of winter, the end result was devastating and Enver lost 86% of his forces. Conquest of Italy in World War II, Siachen conflict were also large-scale mountain warfare examples.

The most dangerous and volatile of all mountain conflicts involves the ongoing one between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region. Since the partition in 1947, both countries have been constantly locked in skirmishes and wars mainly in this Himalayan region with the highest mountains in the world, the first hostilities between the two nations in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947 showed that both were ill-equipped to fight in biting cold, let alone at the highest altitudes in the world.

Later wars between India and Pakistan were mainly fought in the valleys rather than in the mountains, although several major mountain battles took place in all these conflicts, this changed in the Kargil War when Indian forces were faced with the huge task of flushing out intruders and disguised Pakistani soldiers who had captured high mountain posts. This proxy warfare became the only modern war that was fought exclusively on mountains, as a result of its experiences in mountain warfare in Kargil, the Indian Army now conducts courses on specialized artillery use in the mountains, where ballistic projectiles have different characteristics.

Although most of the Falklands War took place on hilltops in semi-Arctic conditions in the Falkland Islands themselves, during the earlier stages of the war, there was some action in the bleak mountainous island of South Georgia. South Georgia is a periantarctic island, and since the war took place during the southern winter, Alpine conditions prevailed almost down to sea level, it was unusual, in that it combined aspects of deep water long range expeditions, Arctic warfare and mountain warfare.

Operation Paraquet was ordered by British Admiral Fieldhouse on 12 April 1982. It was to involve Mountain Troops from D Squadron SAS in Ascension, 150 Royal Marines on the tanker Tidespring, 2SBS on Plymouth and 6SBS in the submarine Conqueror. Conqueror was first on the scene and carried out a survey of key areas of the South Georgia coast. The operation was originally supposed to involve both SAS and SBS forces being infiltrated onto South Georgia by helicopters from the Tidespring and Antrim, but the plan had to be changed when the two Wessex helicopters transporting the SAS troops to an ambitious location on the west coast crashed in atrocious weather conditions on Fortuna Glacier; the troops and aircrew were rescued by Antrim's Wessex helicopter, the last remaining to the expedition.[2]

Kunar and eastern Nuristan are strategic terrain, the area constitutes a major infiltration route into Afghanistan, and insurgents can enter these provinces from any number of places along the Pakistani border to gain access to a vast network of river valleys. In this part of Afghanistan (Regional Command East), the US military has adopted a hybrid style of mountain warfare incorporating counterinsurgency (COIN) theory, in which the population is paramount as the center of gravity in the fight. In counterinsurgency, seizing and holding territory is less important than avoiding civilian casualties, the primary goal of counterinsurgency is to secure the backing of the populace and thereby legitimize the government rather than focus on militarily defeating the insurgents. Counterinsurgency doctrine has proved difficult to implement in Kunar and Nuristan; in the sparsely populated mountain regions of Eastern Afghanistan, strategists have argued for holding the high ground—a tenet of classical mountain warfare. The argument suggests that if the counterinsurgent does not deny the enemy the high ground, then the insurgents will be able to attack at will; in the Kunar and Nuristan regions US forces continue to pursue a hybrid style of counterinsurgency warfare, with its focus on winning hearts and minds, and mountain warfare, whereby the US forces seize and hold the high ground.

The expense of training mountain troops precludes them from being on the order of battle of most armies except those who reasonably expect to fight in such terrain. Mountain warfare training is arduous and in many countries is the exclusive preserve of elite units such as special forces or commandos, who as part of their remit should have the ability to fight in difficult terrain (e.g. the Royal Marines). Regular units may also occasionally undertake training of this nature.

Gebirgsjäger is the German word for mountain infantry (Gebirge meaning "mountain range", and Jäger meaning "hunter" or "ranger"). The word Jäger is the traditional German term for light infantry.

The mountain infantry of Austria have their roots in the three "Landesschützen" regiments of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the mountain infantry of Germany carry on certain traditions of the Alpenkorps (Alpine corps) of World War I. Both countries' mountain infantry share the Edelweiss insignia, it was established in 1907 as a symbol of the Austro-Hungarian Landesschützen regiments by Emperor Franz Joseph I. These troops wore their Edelweiss on the collar of their uniforms. When the Alpenkorps came to aid the Landesschützen in defending the Austro-Hungary's southern frontier against the Italian attack in May 1915, the grateful Landesschützen honoured the men of the Alpenkorps by awarding them their own insignia: the Edelweiss.

Today the traditions of the Austrian mountain infantry (Gebirgsjäger) are maintained by the 6th Jägerbrigade in Innsbruck, subdivided in three battalions (Jägerbataillon 23, Jägerbataillon 24 and Jägerbataillon 26).

Honouring tradition, upon the creation of the Bundeswehr in 1955, the mountain infantry returned as a distinctive arm of the German army, until 2001, they were organized as the 1st Mountain Division 1. Gebirgsdivision, but this division was disbanded in a general reform, the successor unit is Gebirgsjägerbrigade 23 which has its headquarters in Bad Reichenhall (Bavaria). Battalions of these mountain infantry are deployed in southern Bavaria.

The soldiers of the mountain infantry wear a grey cap (“Bergmütze”) with an Edelweiss on its left side, this distinguishes them from all other German army soldiers who wear berets. The formal uniform, which is based on traditional skiing outfits, is also different from the standard German military uniform, and consists of ski jacket, stretch trousers and ski boots.

The "Kaiserjägermarsch" ('March of the Kaiserjäger') from 1914 is the traditional military march of the German and Austrian mountain infantry.

Brazilian Army mountain warfare training is organized by the 11th Mountain Infantry Battalion, located in São João del Rei (Minas Gerais), they served beside the US 10th Mountain Division in the Italian Apennine Mountains in World War II, fighting at Monte Castello and Montese. This battalion develops the mountaineering techniques for the Brazilian Army, the Brazilian Mountain Guides serve also. The 11th battalion has troops deployed in Haiti integrating the MINUSTAH.

Bulgaria's 101st Alpine Battalion (Bulgarian: 101-ви алпийски батальон), based in Smolyan, is currently the only Bulgarian unit specialized in mountain warfare. A unique feature is their armament – Mosin–Nagant rifles, which were selected due to their excellent performance in high-altitude warfare, the battalion also has portable 60-mm mortars.

The unit is experienced in the terrain of the Rhodope Mountains, and during the Cold War it trained extensively for operations against Greek and Turkish forces.

Until 1859, Italy wasn't yet a unified state but a sum of kingdoms and independent republics (Kingdom of Naples, Republic of Venice, Papal States, etc.). The situation changed with the unification of Italy. France saw this geopolitical change as a possible threat from the other side of the Alps border, partially as the Italians were the first to raise a corps of mountain warfare troops: the Alpini.

The French solution was to create its own mountain corps in order to oppose a possible Italian invasion through the Alps. By December 24, 1888, a law created a troupes de montagne ("mountain troops") corps. Of the 31 existing Chasseurs à Pied ('Hunters on Foot') battalions, 12 were selected to be converted, these first units were named Bataillons Alpins de Chasseurs à Pied ('Alpine Battalions of Hunters on Foot'), later shortened to Bataillons de Chasseurs Alpins ('Alpine Hunters Battalions').

Since 1999 they have been (with other units) part of the 27th Mountain Infantry Brigade (Brigade d'Infanterie de Montagne), and are currently organised into three battalions:

7th Battalion, Bourg-Saint-Maurice

13th Battalion, Chambéry

27th Battalion, Cran-Gevrier (Annecy)

All three battalions are based in cities in the French Alps, thus the name of the units.

The Chasseurs are recognised by their wide beret (when not in battle uniform), named tarte ('pie'), the British Army adopted the beret in the 1920s after having seen similar berets worn by the 70th Chasseurs Alpins (now disbanded).

Georgia, located in the Lesser Caucasus and dominated by rough and mountainous terrain, has a long history of mountaineering. Engagements involving Khevsurian highlanders and various partisan wars date back at least to the Early Modern Period, as well as border wars of the early 20th century. Soviet Georgian mountain troops played a role in preventing Axis troops from crossing the Caucasus Mountains during the Battle of the Caucasus in World War II.

In June 1991, the year Georgia declared independence, the 16th Mountain Battalion was formed at Sachkhere, succeeding the Sachkhere Battalion, the 16th Battalion participated in all of Georgia's 1990s territorial conflicts, with 21 soldiers killed in the line of duty.

The actual school itself was officially established in 2006 on the basis of a training-and re-training school from two years earlier in cooperation with French counterparts. Georgian instructors since then train and are being trained by French instructors in a 3-year program, the school earning several awards and certificates among them a status as NATO training center to train instructors and troops from other nations, including NATO members such as Germany, Poland, Norway and partner countries,[5] the Mountain Warfare School is also responsible for providing training to Georgia's own and its neighbouring countries' elite troops as well as law enforcement and counter terrorism units.[6] For conflict and special emergencies, the school itself fields a company-strong force, which is regarded as one of the most elite units in the Georgian army.[citation needed]

Each brigade's reconnaissance units that are also generally considered elite have been trained in mountain warfare, however the largest and more recognised formation specialised in that particular area is Georgia's Special Mountain Battalion, part of the country's special forces. In a more harsh manner the brigade's Special Forces Group exercises mountain and alpine warfare.

The Indian Army has fought numerous conflicts in the Himalayas in Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, while maintaining one of the largest active contingents of mountain warfare forces in the world.[citation needed] Major conflicts include the 1962 Sino-Indian War and the Kargil War in 1999. Siachen Glacier is the world's highest battlefield, with about 3000 Indian troops on year-round deployment on the edge of a glacier. For over two decades, India and Pakistan have fought numerous skirmishes in this most inhospitable of mountain territories, at altitudes over 6,000 metres (20,000 ft) and at temperatures as low as −50 °C (−58 °F).

Due to the instability in the region and the need for permanent deployments in the mountainous regions, India's mountain warfare units were expanded after the 1962 war, with the creation of six mountain divisions,[7] the Indian Army presently has ten divisions dedicated to mountain warfare (eight mountain divisions and two mountain strike divisions) and another infantry division earmarked for high altitude operations. Each division has a personnel strength of 10,000–13,000 troops and consists of three brigades with 3,000 to 4,500 men each, including support elements such as signals, provost, and intelligence units.[8]

The Indian Military Academy (IMA), Dehradun conducts preliminary mountaineering and mountain warfare training for all Officer Cadets. Discontinued in the late 1980s, the Bhadraj Camp was revived in 1999 after the Kargil War, the culmination is a course of a 40 km run and climbing a 5500-foot cliff with a fully loaded pack at night.[9]

For more specialized training, the Army operates the Parvat Ghatak School (Hindi: पर्वत घातक, Mountain Strike or Mountain Warrior) at Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh. This high-altitude commando school is the highest of its kind at 15,000 feet, with the mercury dipping to minus 20 degrees, providing a freezing tougher terrain to impart training in conditions similar to Siachen.[10]

Another school, the High Altitude Warfare School (HAWS) is located near Gulmarg, Jammu and Kashmir. Set up in 1948 as the 19 Infantry Division Ski School, HAWS has over the years become the Indian Army's nodal center for "specialised training and dissemination of doctrines" in high-altitude, mountain and snow warfare. HAWS Mountain warfare courses are conducted in the Sonamarg area, and snow-craft & winter warfare training in the Gulmarg area. HAWS played an important role during the Kargil War by conducting crash courses for troops prior to their deployment.[11]

Given the experience of the Indian Army in mountain warfare, troops from other nations regularly train and conduct joint exercises at these schools, because of its experience in fighting wars in mountain regions for over 50 years, as well as its history of recruitment of natives from the Himalayan regions of India and Nepal (such as Gurkha, Kumaon, Garhwal and Dogras), Indian Mountain Warfare Units are considered among the best in the world [according to whom?]. Numerous army units across the world are now implementing training modules modeled after Indian Mountain Warfare training systems,[11] these include forces from UK,[12] US,[13] Russia, Israel, etc; in 2004, US special forces teams were sent to India to learn from Indian Army experiences of the Kargil War prior to their deployment for operations in Afghanistan. Russian troops also trained at the High Altitude Warfare School in Gulmarg for operations in Chechnya,[14][15] they also visited Siachen and other Army posts.[16]

Formed on October 15, 1872, to protect Italy's northern mountainous borders, the "Alpini" are the earliest active elite mountain warfare infantry in the world, on June 7, 1883, the Alpini were awarded the fiamme verdi ('green flames') collar patch, thus elevating them to a speciality within the Italian Infantry Corps. Also adopted was their distinctive headdress; the Cappello Alpino with its black feather, which led to them being nicknamed Le Penne Nere ('the Black Feathers').

They distinguished themselves during World War I as they fought against Austro-Hungarian soldiers in what has since been called the "War in snow and ice", during World War II, the Alpini fought mostly on the Eastern Front being tasked to hold the front in the Don river plains.

In the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, three of the five Alpini brigades and many support units were disbanded due to the reorganization process of the Italian Army. Currently, despite having some of the best trained and best equipped mountain troops in the world, the military role of Alpines is seen in terms of peacekeeping missions and minor disputes interventions.

The 4th Alpini Parachutist Regiment is a special operations unit specialising in airborne assault, comparable to the United States Army Rangers. It originated from the Alpini paratrooper platoons in each of the five Alpini brigades, which were merged on 1 April 1964 in the Alpine Paratroopers Company.

The Centro Addestramento AlpinoAosta is the Army's school responsible for the mountain training of its troops, the 6th Regiment is based in Innichen in the province of South Tyrol and directly subordinated to the Alpine Troops Command (COMALP). It functions as a NATO-wide high altitude warfare training centre and administers the Training Areas in the Puster Valley.

In the Pakistan Army, mountain training is considered part of overall training and all soldiers and units are expected to be proficient at it. Almost all units of all arms serve tours in Kashmir (Pakistan administrated Kashmir) and Northern Areas, often in active duties on the Line of Control or Siachin, the Army's High-Altitude School, at Rattu in Pakistan administrated Kashmir,[17] is an ideal location on the confluence of the Hindukush, Himalayas, and Karakorum ranges. The school conducts training throughout the year and includes mountain climbing on peaks ranging from 15,000 to 20,000 feet and survival on glaciated terrain and in snowy and icy conditions.[18]

The Podhale rifles (Polish: strzelcy podhalańscy) is a traditional name of the mountain infantry units of the Polish Army. Formed in 1918 out of volunteers of the region of Podhale, in 1919 the smaller detachments of the Podhale rifles were pressed into two mountain infantry divisions, the 21st Mountain Infantry and 22nd Mountain Infantry Divisions, as well as into three brigades of mountain infantry, the units were roughly equivalent to the German Gebirgsjäger troops. Currently the Polish Army maintains one brigade of mountain infantry.

The Vânători de Munte ("Mountain Hunters/Rangers", Romanian pronunciation: [vɨnəˈtorʲ de ˈmunte]) are the elite mountain troops of the Romanian Land Forces. They were first established as an independent corps in 1916 during World War I, and became operational in 1917 under the Corpul de Munte designation.

There are currently two operational brigades, one subordinated to the 1st Territorial Army Corps (the 2nd Mountain Troops Brigade), and another to the 4th Territorial Army Corps (61st Mountain Troops Brigade). Mountain troops are participating in peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan.

Mountains constitute almost half the area of Sweden, including its northern border. Winter and mountain warfare skills were therefore always important to the country. Between 1945 and 2000 Sweden trained and deployed several companies per year at the Army Ranger School and later the Lapland/Arctic Mountain Ranger regiment (I22) in Kiruna (located some 150 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle in Lapland), the school/regiment drew on experiences gained during World War II from guarding and patrolling the mountainous northern borders and uninhabited inland mountain regions, as well as from light infantry and ski fighting in Finland in the wars against the Soviet Union. Later the army as a whole benefited from the Army Ranger School, as commanding and training officers as well as complete fighting units undertook training there. Exchanges were also organised with similar units in, for example, Finland, Norway, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, the UK, and the USA.

As part of major armed forces reductions in 2000, the Lapland ranger regiment (I22) in Kiruna was disbanded, and its several trained and equipped battalion and company sized field units were deactivated. More recently the army has created a dedicated mountain platoon, this is now based at the ranger detachment (known as Arméns Jägarbataljon or simply AJB) in Arvidsjaur (located 100 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle); since AJB is a detachment, it is a part of Norrbotten Regiment (I 19) in Boden. The task for this single battalion is to guide other smaller units in the mountains besides taking on reconnaissance and fighting tasks.

The Turkish Army has a mountain warfare specialized brigade (Bolu Commando Brigade) located at the city of Bolu in northwestern Turkey, which actually operates in the province of Hakkari and northern Iraq, the Hakkari Mountain Commando Brigade mostly performs counter-terrorism operations in this extremely rugged region of south-eastern Turkey, with an average elevation of 3,500 metres (11,500 ft) and wintertime temperatures below −30 °C (−22 °F). The officers and soldiers of this brigade as well as other troops are trained in Egirdir Mountain and Commando School in Egirdir, near the city of Isparta, the training and facilities offered by the school are utilized by other members of NATO, and non-NATO countries such as Pakistan, Azerbaijan and some Eastern European countries.

Hakkari Mountain Commando Brigade has been at the forefront of counter-terrorism operations against the PKK militant organization since the late 1980s, and has participated in several cross-border operations and incursions into Iraq in hot pursuit of PKK militants. Most recently, in February 2008, the brigade participated in Operation Sun, in which 10,000 Turkish Armed Forces troops entered and temporarily seized Iraqi territory utilized by PKK, the entire operation took place in the region of northern Iraq near the Qandil Mountains in extreme winter conditions.

1.
War
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War is a state of armed conflict between societies. It is generally characterized by extreme aggression, destruction, and mortality, an absence of war is usually called peace. Warfare refers to the activities and characteristics of types of war. Total war is warfare that is not restricted to legitimate military targets. While some scholars see war as a universal and ancestral aspect of human nature, as concerns a belligerents losses in proportion to its prewar population, the most destructive war in modern history may have been the Paraguayan War. In 2013 war resulted in 31,000 deaths, down from 72,000 deaths in 1990, in 2003, Richard Smalley identified war as the sixth biggest problem facing humanity for the next fifty years. Another byproduct of some wars is the prevalence of propaganda by some or all parties in the conflict, the word is related to the Old Saxon werran, Old High German werran, and the German verwirren, meaning “to confuse”, “to perplex”, and “to bring into confusion”. In German, the equivalent is Krieg, the Spanish, Portuguese, the scholarly study of war is sometimes called polemology, from the Greek polemos, meaning war, and -logy, meaning the study of. Studies of war by military theorists throughout military history have sought to identify the philosophy of war, asymmetric warfare is a conflict between two populations of drastically different levels of military capability or size. Biological warfare, or germ warfare, is the use of weaponized biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, chemical warfare involves the use of weaponized chemicals in combat. Poison gas as a weapon was principally used during World War I. Civil war is a war between forces belonging to the nation or political entity. Conventional warfare is declared war between states in which nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons are not used or see limited deployment, cyberwarfare involves the actions by a nation-state or international organization to attack and attempt to damage another nations information systems. Information warfare is the application of force on a large scale against information assets and systems, against the computers. Nuclear warfare is warfare in which weapons are the primary, or a major. War of aggression is a war for conquest or gain rather than self-defense, the earliest recorded evidence of war belongs to the Mesolithic cemetery Site 117, which has been determined to be approximately 14,000 years old. About forty-five percent of the skeletons there displayed signs of violent death, since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe. The advent of gunpowder and the acceleration of technological advances led to modern warfare

2.
Military history
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On the other hand, Just War Theory explores the moral dimensions of warfare, and to better limit the destructive reality caused by war, seeks to establish a doctrine of military ethics. The discipline of history is dynamic, changing with development as much of the subject area as the societies. An important recent concept is the Revolution in Military Affairs which attempts to explain how warfare has been shaped by emerging technologies and it highlights the short outbursts of rapid change followed by periods of relative stability. In terms of the profession in major countries, military history is an orphan. William H. McNeill points out, This branch of our discipline flourishes in an intellectual ghetto, the study of military history in universities remains seriously underdeveloped. Indeed, lack of interest in and disdain for military history probably constitute one of the strangest prejudices of the profession, historiography is the study of the history and method of the discipline of history or the study of a specialised topic. In this case, military history with an eye to gaining an accurate assessment of conflicts using all available sources, Military historians use Historiographical analysis in an effort to allow an unbiased, contemporary view of records. Historians utilize their knowledge of government regulation and military organization, and employing a targeted, despite these limits, wars are some of the most studied and detailed periods of human history. Military historians have often compared organization, tactical and strategic ideas, leadership, in the early 1980s, historian Jeffrey Kimball surveyed the ideological preferences of 109 active diplomatic historians in the United States as well as 54 active military historians. He reports that, Of historians in the field of history, 7% are Socialist, 19% are Other, 53% are Liberal, 11% are None. Of military historians, 0% are Socialist, 8% are Other, 35% are Liberal, 18% are None, the documentation of military history begins with the confrontation between Sumer and Elam c.2700 BC near the modern Basra, and includes such enduring records as the Hebrew Bible. Other prominent records in history are the Trojan War in Homers Iliad. An approach centered on the analysis of a leader was taken by Xenophon in Anabasis, the records of the Roman Julius Caesar enable a comparative approach for campaigns such as Commentarii de Bello Gallico and Commentarii de Bello Civili. New weapons development can dramatically alter the face of war, the cost of warfare, the preparations, a rule of thumb is that if your enemy has a potentially war winning weapon, you have to either match it or neutralize it. The chariot was an effective, fast weapon, while one man controlled the maneuvering of the chariot and these became crucial to the maintenance of several governments, including the New Egyptian Kingdom and the Shang Dynasty and the nation states of early to mid Zhou dynasty. The infantry started as opposing armed groups of soldiers underneath commanders, the Greeks and early Romans used rigid, heavily armed phalanxes. The Macedonians and Hellenistic states would adopt phalanx formations with sarissa pikemen, the Romans would later adopt more flexible maniples from their neighbors which made them extremely successful in the field of battle. The kingdoms of the Warring States in East Asia also adopted infantry combat, in the Sicilian Expedition, led by Athens in an attempt to subdue Syracuse, the well-trained Syracusan cavalry became crucial to the success of the Syracusans

3.
Prehistoric warfare
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Prehistoric warfare refers to war that occurred between societies without recorded history. Kellys Warless Societies and the Origin of War, for the purposes of this article, prehistoric war will be broadly defined as a state of organized lethal aggression between autonomous preliterate communities. According to cultural anthropologist and ethnographer Raymond C, Kelly, the earliest hunter-gatherer societies of Homo erectus population density was probably low enough to avoid armed conflict. This behavior may have accelerated the migration out of Africa of H. erectus some 1.8 million years ago as a consequence of conflict avoidance. Of the many paintings of the Upper Paleolithic, none depict people attacking other people. The only rock art that depicts violence between hunter-gatherers comes from a unique Northern Australian sequence that began approximately 10,000 years ago, skeletal and artifactual evidence of intergroup violence between Paleolithic nomadic foragers is absent as well. The most ancient archaeological record of what could have be a massacre is at the epipaleolithic site of Cemetery 117. Nearly half of the bodies are female, who generally do not believe would have played an active role in violent skirmishes. It has been noted that the violence might have occurred in the wake of an ecological crisis. The initial report concluded that the bodies at Nataruk were not interred, Early war was influenced by the development of bows, maces, and slings. The bow seems to have been the most important weapon in early warfare and these figures are arrayed in lines and columns with a distinctly garbed leader at the front. Some paintings even portray still-recognizable tactics like flankings and envelopments, a Neolithic society is defined as a society that cultivates domesticated plants and manufactures tools only from natural materials. Evidence indicates that warfare was present in many Neolithic societies, for example, the Talheim Death Pit and Crow Creek Site are sites of Neolithic massacres. The Māori of New Zealand are notable for the thousands of fortifications constructed to enhance a groups standing in the fighting on their islands in the South Pacific. These substantial fortifications show that there was considerable social organization in the societies of prehistoric peoples and this is indirect corollary evidence for them also having been capable of conducting organized warfare. The onset of the Chalcolithic saw the introduction of copper daggers, axes, for the most part, these were far too expensive and malleable to be efficient weapons. They are considered by scholars to have been largely ceremonial implements. It was only with the development of bronze that edged metal weapons became commonplace, continued excavations in 2008 and 2010 expand on that

4.
Ancient warfare
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Ancient warfare is war as conducted from the beginnings of recorded history to the end of the ancient period. In India, the ancient period ends with the decline of the Gupta Empire, in Japan, the ancient period can be taken to end with the rise of feudalism in the Kamakura period in the 12-13th century. The difference between prehistoric and ancient warfare is one of technology than of organization. The development of first city-states, and then empires, allowed warfare to change dramatically, beginning in Mesopotamia, states produced sufficient agricultural surplus so that full-time ruling elites and military commanders could emerge. While the bulk of forces were still farmers, the society could support having them campaigning rather than working the land for a portion of each year. Thus, organized armies developed for the first time and these new armies could help states grow in size and became increasingly centralized. Early ancient armies continued to use bows and spears, the same weapons that had been developed in prehistoric times for hunting. The findings at the site of Nataruk in Turkana, Kenya, have interpreted as evidence of inter-group conflict and warfare in antiquity. Early armies in Egypt and China followed a pattern of using massed infantry armed with bows. Infantry were at time the dominant form of war, partially because the camel saddle. This infantry would be divided into ranged and shock, with shock infantry either charging to cause penetration of the line or holding their own. These forces would ideally be combined, thus presenting your opponent with a dilemma, group your forces and leave them vulnerable to ranged, or spread them out and make them vulnerable to shock. This balance would eventually change as technology allowed for chariots, cavalry, no clear line can be drawn between ancient and medieval warfare. The characteristic properties of medieval warfare, notably heavy cavalry and siege engines such as the trebuchet were first introduced in Late Antiquity, as states grew in size, speed of movement became crucial because central power could not hold if rebellions could not be suppressed rapidly. The first solution to this was the chariot which became used in the Middle East from around 1800 BC, First pulled by oxen and donkeys, they allowed rapid traversing of the relatively flat lands of the Middle East. The chariots were light enough that they could easily be floated across rivers, improvements in the ability to train horses soon allowed them to be used to pull chariots, possibly as early as 2100 BC, and their greater speed and power made chariots even more efficient. The major drawback of the use of chariots is similar to one of its advantages, the lack of armor causes it to be extremely vulnerable to spears, pikes, etc. The power of the chariot as a device both of transportation and of battle became the weapon of the peoples of the Ancient Near East in the 2nd millennium BC

5.
Medieval warfare
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Medieval warfare is the European warfare of the Middle Ages. Technological, cultural, and social developments had forced a dramatic transformation in the character of warfare from antiquity, changing military tactics, in terms of fortification, the Middle Ages saw the emergence of the castle in Europe, which then spread to Western Asia. Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus wrote De re militari possibly in the late 4th century, described by historian Walter Goffart as the bible of warfare throughout the Middle Ages, De re militari was widely distributed through the Latin West. While Western Europe relied on a text for the basis of its military knowledge. According to Vegetius, infantry was the most important element of an army because it was compared to cavalry. One of the tenets he put forward was that a general should only engage in battle when he was sure of victory or had no other choice, as archaeologist Robert Liddiard explains, Pitched battles, particularly in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, were rare. Historian Michael Clanchy noted the medieval axiom that laymen are illiterate and its converse that clergy are literate, so it may be the case that few soldiers read Vegetius work. While it is uncertain to what extent his work was read by the class as opposed to the clergy. In Europe, breakdowns in centralized power led to the rise of a number of groups that turned to large-scale pillage as a source of income, most notably the Vikings raided significantly. As these groups were small and needed to move quickly, building fortifications was a good way to provide refuge and protection for the people. These fortifications evolved over the course of the Middle Ages, the most important form being the castle, the castle served as a protected place for the local elites. Fortifications were an important part of warfare because they provided safety to the lord, his family. They provided refuge from armies too large to face in open battle, the ability of the heavy cavalry to dominate a battle on an open field was useless against fortifications. Building siege engines was a process, and could seldom be effectively done without preparations before the campaign. Many sieges could take months, if not years, to weaken or demoralize the defenders sufficiently, Siege techniques also included mining in which tunnels were dug under a section of the wall and then rapidly collapsed to destabilize the walls foundation. A final technique was to bore into the walls, however this was not nearly as effective as other methods due to the thickness of castle walls. Several of these techniques were used by the Romans but experienced a rebirth during the Crusades. Advances in the prosecution of sieges encouraged the development of a variety of defensive counter-measures, arrow slits, concealed doors for sallies, and deep water wells were also integral to resisting siege at this time

6.
Early modern warfare
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This entire period is contained within the Age of Sail, which characteristic dominated the eras naval tactics, including the use of gunpowder in naval artillery. In the Horn of Africa, the Adals conquest of Ethiopia and the involving of the Ottomans, Mamluks, the earliest surviving bronze hand cannon, dates to 1288, during the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty of China. Gunpowder warfare was used in the Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281, Japanese scrolls contain illustrations of bombs used by the Yuan-Mongol forces against mounted samurai. In 1326 the earliest known European picture of a gun appeared in a manuscript by Walter de Milemete, in 1350, Petrarch wrote that the presence of cannons on the battlefield was as common and familiar as other kinds of arms. Early artillery played a role in the 100 Years War. The period from 1500–1801 saw an advance in techniques of fortification in Europe. Whereas medieval castles had relied on high walls to keep out attackers, to do this, engineers developed a style of fortress known as the trace italienne or Italian style. These had low, thick, sloping walls, that would absorb or glance off cannon fire. In addition, they were shaped like stars, with bastions protruding at sharp angles, the reason for this was to ensure that every bastion could be supported with fire from an adjacent bastion, leaving no dead ground for an attacker to take cover in. These new fortifications quickly negated the advantages cannon had offered to besiegers, a polygonal fort is a fortification in the style that evolved around the middle of the 18th century, in response to the development of explosive shells. The polygonal style of fortification is described as a flankless fort. Many such forts were built in the United Kingdom and the British Empire during the government of Lord Palmerston and their low profile makes them easy to overlook. In response to the vulnerabilities of star forts, military engineers evolved a much simpler but more robust style of fortification. An example of style can be seen at Fort McHenry in Baltimore in the United States of America. The power of aristocracies vis à vis states diminished throughout Western Europe during this period, aristocrats 200- to 400-year-old ancestral castles no longer provided useful defences against artillery. The nobilitys importance in warfare also eroded as medieval heavy cavalry lost its role in battle. The heavy cavalry - made up of armored knights - had begun to fade in importance in the Late Middle Ages, the English longbow and the Swiss pike had both proven their ability to devastate larger armed forces of mounted knights. However, the use of the longbow required a lifetime of training, making it impossible to amass very large forces of archers

7.
Modern warfare
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Modern warfare is warfare using the concepts, methods, and military technology that have come into use during and after World War II. War in modern times has been the inclusion of civilians and civilian infrastructure as targets in destroying the enemys ability to engage in war, the targeting of civilians developed from two distinct theories. The first theory was if enough civilians were killed, factories could not function. The second theory was that if civilians were killed, the enemy would be so demoralized that it would have no ability to wage further war. However, UNICEF reports that civilian fatalities are down from 20 percent prior to 1900 AD to less than 5 percent of fatalities in the beginning in the 1990s. It includes the environment, factors, and conditions that must be understood to successfully apply combat power, protect the force and this includes enemy and friendly forces, facilities, weather and terrain within the operational areas and areas of interest. Some argue that the forms of third generation warfare represents nothing more than an evolution of earlier technology. Aerial warfare is the use of aircraft and other flying machines in warfare. A military situation in which two belligerents of unequal strength interact and take advantage of their strengths and weaknesses. This interaction often involves strategies and tactics outside the bounds of conventional warfare, biological warfare, also known as germ warfare, is the use of any organism or toxin found in nature, as a weapon of war. It is meant to incapacitate or kill enemy combatants and it may also be defined as the employment of biological agents to produce casualties in man or animals and damage to plants or material, or defense against such employment. Chemical warfare is warfare using the properties of chemical substances to incapacitate or kill enemy combatants. Electronic warfare refers to mainly non-violent practices used chiefly to support areas of warfare. Fourth generation warfare is a concept defined by William S. Lind and expanded by Thomas X. Hammes, the simplest definition includes any war in which one of the major participants is not a state but rather a violent ideological network. Fourth Generation wars are characterized by a blurring of the lines between war and politics, combatants and civilians, conflicts and peace, battlefields and safety, while this term is similar to terrorism and asymmetric warfare, it is much narrower. Classical insurgencies and the Indian Wars are examples of pre-modern wars, fourth generation warfare usually has the insurgency group or non-state side trying to implement their own government or reestablish an old government over the one currently running the territory. The blurring of lines between state and non-state is further complicated in a democracy by the power of the media, ground warfare involves three types of combat units, Infantry, Armor, and Artillery. Infantry in modern times would consist of Mechanized infantry and Airborne forces, usually having a type of rifle or sub-machine gun, an infantryman is the basic unit of an army

8.
Industrial warfare
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The era featured mass-conscripted armies, rapid transportation, telegraph and wireless communications, and the concept of total war. One of the features of industrial warfare is the concept of total war. There are several reasons for the rise of total warfare in the 19th century, as countries capital and natural resources grew, it became clear that some forms of warfare demanded more resources than others. Consequently, the greater cost of warfare became evident, an industrialized nation could distinguish and then choose the intensity of warfare that it wished to engage in. Additionally, warfare was becoming more mechanized and required greater infrastructure, combatants could no longer live off the land, but required an extensive support network of people behind the lines to keep them fed and armed. This required the mobilization of the home front, modern concepts like propaganda were first used to boost production and maintain morale, while rationing took place to provide more war materiel. The earliest modern example of war was the American Civil War. They believed that to break the backbone of the South, the North had to employ scorched earth tactics, or as Sherman called it, Shermans advance through Georgia and the Carolinas was characterized by widespread destruction of civilian supplies and infrastructure. In contrast to later conflicts, the damage done by Sherman was almost entirely limited to property destruction, in Georgia alone, Sherman claimed he and his men had caused $100,000,000 in damages. Conscription is the enrollment of civilians into military service. Conscription allowed the French Republic to form La Grande Armée, what Napoleon Bonaparte called the nation in arms, for instance, during World War I, bitter political disputes broke out in Canada, Newfoundland, Australia and New Zealand over conscription. Canada also had a dispute over conscription during World War II. Both South Africa and Australia put limits on where conscripts could fight in WWII, similarly, mass protests against conscription to fight the Vietnam War occurred in several countries in the late 1960s. Russia, as well as smaller nations such as Switzerland. Prior to the invention of the transport, combatants were transported from by wagons, horses. With the advent of locomotives, large groups of combatants, supplies, to counter this, an opposing force would destroy rail lines to hinder their enemies movements. General Shermans men during the American Civil War, would destroy tracks, heat the rails, the mass transportation of combatants was further revolutionized with the advent of the internal combustion engine and the automobile. Combined with the use of the machine gun, the horse

9.
Fourth-generation warfare
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Fourth-generation warfare is conflict characterized by a blurring of the lines between war and politics, combatants and civilians. The term was first used in 1989 by a team of United States analysts, including paleoconservative William S. Lind, to describe warfares return to a decentralized form. In terms of modern warfare, the fourth generation signifies the nation states loss of their near-monopoly on combat forces. The simplest definition includes any war in one of the major participants is not a state. Classical examples of type of conflict, such as the slave uprising under Spartacus. In 2006, the concept was expanded upon by USMC Colonel Thomas X. Hammes in his book, The Sling. The generations of warfare described by authors are, 1st Generation, tactics of line and column. Lind describes First Generation of warfare as beginning after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ending the Thirty Years War and establishing the states need to organize, 1GW consisted of tightly ordered soldiers with top-down discipline. These troops would fight in order and advance slowly. This began to change as the battlefield changed, old line and column tactics are now considered suicidal as the bow and arrow/sword morphed into the rifle and machine gun. 2nd Generation, tactics of linear fire and movement, with reliance on indirect fire and this type of warfare can be seen in the early stages of World War I where there was still strict adherence to drill and discipline of formation and uniform. However, there remained a dependence on artillery and firepower to break the stalemate, 3rd Generation, tactics of infiltration to bypass and collapse the enemys combat forces rather than seeking to close with and destroy them, and defence in depth. These aspects of 3GW bleed into 4GW as it is also warfare of speed, however, it targets both military forces and home populations. The use of warfare can be traced to the Cold War period, as superpowers and major powers attempted to retain their grip on colonies. Many of these occur in the geographic area described by author Thomas P. M. Barnett as the Non-Integrating Gap. Fourth-generation warfare has much in common with traditional low-intensity conflict in its forms of insurgency. As in those wars, the conflict is initiated by the weaker party through actions which can be termed offensive. The difference lies in the manner in which 4GW opponents adapt those traditional concepts to present day conditions and this amalgamation and metamorphosis produces novel ways of war for both the entity on the offensive and that on the defensive

10.
Cyberwarfare
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As a major developed economy, the United States is highly dependent on the Internet and therefore greatly exposed to cyberwarfare attacks. At the same time, the United States has substantial capabilities in both defense and power projection thanks to its technology and large military budget. Cyber warfare is one of the reflections of globalization, expanded communication technology. As the physical world stays intact, the cyberworld shrinks year by year, facilitating hacking, anyone educated enough can hack into confidential files and obtain information to any movement, attack or strategy. In response to growing threats, the United States has developed significant cyber capabilities. The United States Department of Defense recognises the use of computers and the Internet to conduct warfare in cyberspace as a threat to national security, the United States Cyber Command centralizes command of cyberspace operations, organizes existing cyber resources and synchronizes defense of U. S. military networks. It is an armed forces sub-unified command subordinate to United States Strategic Command, the five pillars is the framework for the United States military strategy for cyberwarfare. The first pillar is to recognize that the new domain for warfare is similar to the other elements in the battlespace. The second pillar is proactive defenses as opposed to passive defense, two examples of passive defense are computer hygiene and firewalls. The balance of the attacks require active defense using sensors to provide a response to detect. This would provide military tactics to backtrace, hunt down and attack an enemy intruder, the third pillar is critical infrastructure protection to ensure the protection of critical infrastructure. The fourth pillar is the use of defense, which would provide the ability of early detection. The fifth pillar is maintain and enhance the advantage of technological change and this would include improved computer literacy and increasing artificial intelligence capabilities. In April 2015, the U. S. Department of Defense published its latest Cyber Strategy building upon the Five Pillars published in July 2011 and this includes being prepared to operate and continue to carry out missions in environments impacted by cyber attacks. S. It destroyed perhaps over 1000 nuclear centrifuges and, according to a Business Insider article and he said U. S. spy agencies has been watching China and Hong Kong for years. In 1982, a control system stolen from a Canadian company by Soviet spies caused a Soviet gas pipeline to explode. It has been alleged that code for the system had been modified by the CIA to include a logic bomb which changed the pump speeds to cause the explosion. An 1 April 1991 article in InfoWorld Magazine Meta-Virus Set to Unleash Plague on Windows 3.0 Users by John Gantz was purported to be an early example of cyber warfare between 2 countries

11.
Naval warfare
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Naval warfare is combat in and on the sea, the ocean, or any other major body of water such as a large lake or wide river. Mankind has fought battles on the sea for more than 3,000 years, even in the interior of large landmasses, transportation before the advent of extensive railroads was largely dependent upon rivers, canals, and other navigable waterways. Prior to 1750, materials largely moved by barge or sea vessels. Thus armies, with their exorbitant needs for food, ammunition, the oceanic influences throughout pre-recorded history, and classical works such as The Odyssey underscore the past influences. The Persian Empire – united and strong – could not prevail against the might of the Athenian fleet combined with that of city states in several attempts to conquer the Greek city states. Phoenicias and Egypts power, Carthages and even Romes largely depended upon control of the seas, so too did the Venetian Republic dominate Italys city states, thwart the Ottoman Empire, and dominate commerce on the Silk Road and the Mediterranean in general for centuries. For three centuries, the Northmen raided and pillaged and went where they willed, far into central Russia and the Ukraine, many sea battles through history also provide a reliable source of shipwrecks for underwater archaeology. A major example is the exploration of the wrecks of various warships in the Pacific Ocean, the first dateable recorded sea battle occurred about 1210 BC, Suppiluliuma II, king of the Hittites, defeated a fleet from Cyprus, and burned their ships at sea. In the Battle of the Delta, the Ancient Egyptians defeated the Sea Peoples in a sea battle circa 1175 BC, no written mention of strategy or tactics seems to have survived. Josephus Flavius reports a battle between Tyre and the king of Assyria who was aided by the other cities in Phoenicia. The battle took place off the shores of Tyre, although the Tyrian fleet was much smaller in size, the Tyrians defeated their enemies. The Greeks of Homer just used their ships as transport for land armies and it seems unlikely that all this was the product of a single mind or even of a generation, most likely the period of evolution and experimentation was simply not recorded by history. After some initial battles while subjugating the Greeks of the Ionian coast, the Persians determined to invade Greece proper. The first Persian campaign, in 492 BC, was aborted because the fleet was lost in a storm, attacks by the Greek armies repulsed these. The third Persian campaign in 480 BC, under Xerxes I of Persia, but the defeat on land at Thermopylae forced a Greek withdrawal, and Athens evacuated its population to nearby Salamis Island. The ensuing Battle of Salamis was one of the engagements of history. Themistocles trapped the Persians in a too narrow for them to bring their greater numbers to bear. Aeschylus wrote a play about the defeat, The Persians, which was performed in a Greek theatre competition a few years after the battle and it is the oldest known surviving play

12.
Space warfare
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Space warfare is combat that takes place in outer space, i. e. outside an atmosphere. Space warfare therefore includes ground-to-space warfare, such as attacking satellites from the Earth, as well as space-to-space warfare and it does not include the use of satellites for espionage, surveillance, or military communications. For example, one might describe a system in which troops are deployed from orbit as space warfare. In the early 1960s the U. S. military produced a film called Space, from 1985 to 2002 there was a United States Space Command, which in 2002 merged with the United States Strategic Command. Only a few incidents of warfare have occurred in world history. In the mid-1980s a USAF pilot in an F-15 successfully shot down the P78-1, in 2007 China used a missile system to destroy one of its obsolete satellites, and in 2008 the United States similarly destroyed its malfunctioning satellite USA-193. As of 2016 there have no human casualties resulting from conflict in space. International treaties governing space limit or regulate conflicts in space and limit the installation of weapon systems, similar planning in the United States took the form of the Blue Gemini project, which consisted of modified Gemini capsules that would be able to deploy weapons and perform surveillance. The result was a deactivation of many then-orbiting satellites, both American and Soviet, the deleterious and unfocused effects of the EMP test led to the banning of nuclear weapons in space in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Through the 1970s, the Soviet Union continued their project and test-fired a cannon to test space station defense and this was considered too dangerous to do with a crew on board, however, so the test was conducted after the crew had returned to Earth. Space warfare strongly influenced the design of the United States Space Shuttle. The distinctive delta wing shape was needed if the shuttle were to launch a military payload towards the Soviet Union, both the Soviets and the United States developed anti-satellite weaponry designed to shoot down satellites. While early efforts paralleled other space-to-space warfare concepts, the United States was able in the 1980s to develop ground-to-space laser anti-satellite weapons. None of these systems are known to be today, however. The Peoples Republic of China successfully tested a ballistic missile-launched anti-satellite weapon on January 11,2007 and this resulted in harsh criticism from the United States of America, Britain, and Japan. See 2007 Chinese anti-satellite missile test, the U. S. developed an interceptor missile, the SM-3, testing it by hitting ballistic test targets while they were in space. On February 21,2008, the U. S. used a SM-3 missile to destroy a spy satellite, USA-193, Japan fields the U. S. -made SM-3 missile, and there have been plans to base the land-based version in Romania and Vietnam. In the late 1970s and through the 1980s the Soviet Union, Space warfare was seen primarily as an extension of nuclear warfare, and so many theoretical systems were based around the destruction or defense of ground and sea-based missiles

13.
Weapon
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A weapon, arm, or armament is any device used with intent to inflict damage or harm to living beings, structures, or systems. Weapons are used to increase the efficacy and efficiency of such as hunting, crime, law enforcement, self-defense. In a broader context, weapons may be construed to include anything used to gain a strategic, something that has been re-purposed, converted, or enhanced to become a weapon of war is termed weaponized, such as a weaponized virus or weaponized lasers. The use of objects as weapons has been observed among chimpanzees, however, this can not be confirmed using physical evidence because wooden clubs, spears, and unshaped stones would not have left an unambiguous record. The earliest unambiguous weapons to be found are the Schöninger Speere, the first defensive structures and fortifications appeared in the Bronze Age, indicating an increased need for security. Weapons designed to breach fortifications followed soon after, for example the battering ram was in use by 2500 BC, although early Iron Age swords were not superior to their bronze predecessors, once iron-working developed, around 1300 BC in Greece Alex Webb, Metalworking in Ancient Greece. Domestication of the horse and widespread use of spoked wheels by ca.2000 BC, led to the light, the mobility provided by chariots were important during this era. Spoke-wheeled chariot usage peaked around 1300 BC and then declined, ceasing to be militarily relevant by the 4th century BC. Cavalry developed once horses were bred to support the weight of a man, the horse extended the range and increased the speed of attacks. Ships built as weapons or warships such as the trireme were in use by the 7th century BC and these ships were eventually replaced by larger ships by the 4th century BC. European warfare during the Post-classical history was dominated by groups of knights supported by massed infantry. They were involved in combat and sieges which involved various siege weapons. Knights on horseback developed tactics for charging with lances providing an impact on the enemy formations, whereas infantry, in the age before structured formations, relied on cheap, sturdy weapons such as spears and billhooks in close combat and bows from a distance. As armies became more professional, their equipment was standardized and infantry transitioned to pikes, pikes are normally seven to eight feet in length, in conjunction with smaller side-arms. In Eastern and Middle Eastern warfare, similar tactics were developed independent of European influences, the introduction of gunpowder from the Far East at the end of this period revolutionized warfare. Formations of musketeers, protected by pikemen came to dominate open battles, the European Renaissance marked the beginning of the implementation of firearms in western warfare. Guns and rockets were introduced to the battlefield, firearms are qualitatively different from earlier weapons because they release energy from combustible propellants such as gunpowder, rather than from a counter-weight or spring. This energy is released very rapidly and can be replicated without much effort by the user, therefore even early firearms such as the arquebus were much more powerful than human-powered weapons. During the U. S. Civil War various technologies including the gun and ironclad warship emerged that would be recognizable and useful military weapons today

14.
Armoured warfare
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Armoured warfare, mechanised warfare or tank warfare is the use of armoured fighting vehicles in modern warfare. It is a component of modern methods of war. The premise of armoured warfare rests on the ability of troops to penetrate defensive lines through use of manoeuvre by armoured units. Under these conditions, any sort of advance was very slow. Tanks were first developed in Britain and France in 1915, as a way of navigating the barbed wire, British Mark I tanks first went to action at the Somme, on 15 September 1916, but did not manage to break the deadlock of trench warfare. The first French employment on 16 April 1917, of the Schneider CA, was also a failure, in the Battle of Cambrai British tanks were more successful, and broke a German trenchline system, the Hindenburg Line. Despite the generally unpromising beginnings, the military and political leadership in both Britain and France during 1917 backed large investments into armoured vehicle production and this led to a sharp increase in the number of available tanks for 1918. The German Empire to the contrary, produced only a few tanks, twenty German A7V tanks were produced during the entire conflict, compared to over 4,400 French and over 2,500 British tanks of various kinds. Tactically, the deployment of armour during the war was typified by an emphasis on direct infantry support. The tanks main tasks were seen as crushing barbed wire and destroying machine-gun nests, theoretical debate largely focussed on the question whether a swarm of light tanks should be used for this or a limited number of potent heavy vehicles. Though in the Battle of Cambrai a large concentration of British heavy tanks effected a breakthrough, the manoeuvrability of the tank should at least in theory regain armies the ability to flank enemy lines. Following the First World War, the technical and doctrinal aspects of armoured warfare became more sophisticated and diverged into multiple schools of doctrinal thought, during the 1920s, only very few tanks were produced. There were however, important theoretical and technical developments, various British and French commanders who had contributed to the origin of the tank, such as Jean Baptiste Eugène Estienne, B. H. Liddell Hart and J. F. C. Fuller, theorised about a future use of independent armoured forces, containing a large concentration of tanks. Especially Liddell Hart wrote many books about the subject, partly propagating Fullers theories, such doctrines were faced with the reality that during the 1920s the armoured vehicles, as early road transport in general, were extremely unreliable, and could not be used in sustained operations. Mainstream thought on the subject was more conservative and tried to integrate armoured vehicles into the infantry and cavalry organisation. To save weight, such designs had thin armour plating and this inspired fitting small-calibre high-velocity guns in turrets, J. Collins, after Fuller refused the function. The unit carried out operations on Salisbury Plain and was observed by the major nations, the United States, Germany

15.
Artillery
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Artillery is a class of large military weapons built to fire munitions far beyond the range and power of infantrys small arms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach fortifications, and led to heavy, as technology improved, lighter, more mobile field artillery developed for battlefield use. This development continues today, modern self-propelled artillery vehicles are highly mobile weapons of great versatility providing the largest share of an armys total firepower, in its earliest sense, the word artillery referred to any group of soldiers primarily armed with some form of manufactured weapon or armour. In common speech, the artillery is often used to refer to individual devices, along with their accessories and fittings. However, there is no generally recognised generic term for a gun, howitzer, mortar, and so forth, the United States uses artillery piece, the projectiles fired are typically either shot or shell. Shell is a widely used term for a projectile, which is a component of munitions. By association, artillery may also refer to the arm of service that customarily operates such engines, in the 20th Century technology based target acquisition devices, such as radar, and systems, such as sound ranging and flash spotting, emerged to acquire targets, primarily for artillery. These are usually operated by one or more of the artillery arms, Artillery originated for use against ground targets—against infantry, cavalry and other artillery. An early specialist development was coastal artillery for use against enemy ships, the early 20th Century saw the development of a new class of artillery for use against aircraft, anti-aircraft guns. Artillery is arguably the most lethal form of land-based armament currently employed, the majority of combat deaths in the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, and World War II were caused by artillery. In 1944, Joseph Stalin said in a speech that artillery was the God of War, although not called as such, machines performing the role recognizable as artillery have been employed in warfare since antiquity. The first references in the historical tradition begin at Syracuse in 399 BC. From the Middle Ages through most of the era, artillery pieces on land were moved by horse-drawn gun carriages. In the contemporary era, the artillery and crew rely on wheeled or tracked vehicles as transportation, Artillery used by naval forces has changed significantly also, with missiles replacing guns in surface warfare. The engineering designs of the means of delivery have likewise changed significantly over time, in some armies, the weapon of artillery is the projectile, not the equipment that fires it. The process of delivering fire onto the target is called gunnery, the actions involved in operating the piece are collectively called serving the gun by the detachment or gun crew, constituting either direct or indirect artillery fire. The term gunner is used in armed forces for the soldiers and sailors with the primary function of using artillery. The gunners and their guns are usually grouped in teams called either crews or detachments, several such crews and teams with other functions are combined into a unit of artillery, usually called a battery, although sometimes called a company

16.
Biological warfare
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Biological weapons are living organisms or replicating entities that reproduce or replicate within their host victims. Entomological warfare is considered a type of biological weapon. None of these are conventional weapons, which are deployed primarily for their explosive, kinetic, Biological weapons may be employed in various ways to gain a strategic or tactical advantage over the enemy, either by threats or by actual deployments. Like some of the weapons, biological weapons may also be useful as area denial weapons. These agents may be lethal or non-lethal, and may be targeted against a single individual and they may be developed, acquired, stockpiled or deployed by nation states or by non-national groups. In the latter case, or if a nation-state uses it clandestinely, toxins and psychochemical weapons are often referred to as midspectrum agents. Unlike bioweapons, these agents do not reproduce in their host and are typically characterized by shorter incubation periods. Offensive biological warfare, including production, stockpiling and use of biological weapons, was outlawed by the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. Many countries, including signatories of the BWC, currently pursue research into the defense or protection against BW, a nation or group that can pose a credible threat of mass casualty has the ability to alter the terms on which other nations or groups interact with it. Therefore, biological agents may be useful as strategic deterrents in addition to their utility as offensive weapons on the battlefield. As a tactical weapon for use, a significant problem with a BW attack is that it would take days to be effective. Some biological agents have the capability of person-to-person transmission via aerosolized respiratory droplets and this feature can be undesirable, as the agent may be transmitted by this mechanism to unintended populations, including neutral or even friendly forces. While containment of BW is less of a concern for criminal or terrorist organizations, it remains a significant concern for the military. Rudimentary forms of warfare have been practiced since antiquity. During the 6th century BC, the Assyrians poisoned enemy wells with a fungus that would render the enemy delirious, in 1346, the bodies of Mongol warriors of the Golden Horde who had died of plague were thrown over the walls of the besieged Crimean city of Kaffa. Specialists disagree over whether this operation may have been responsible for the spread of the Black Death into Europe, the British Army used smallpox against Native Americans during the Siege of Fort Pitt in 1763. An outbreak that left as many as one hundred Native Americans dead in Ohio Country was reported in 1764, the spread of the disease weakened the natives resistance to the British troops led by Henry Bouquet. It is not clear, however, whether the smallpox was a result of the Fort Pitt incident or the virus was present among the Delaware people

17.
Cavalry
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Cavalry or horsemen were soldiers or warriors who fought mounted on horseback. Cavalry were historically the most mobile of the combat arms, an individual soldier in the cavalry is known by a number of designations such as cavalryman, horseman, dragoon or trooper. The designation of cavalry was not usually given to any military forces that used animals, such as camels. Cavalry had the advantage of improved mobility, and a man fighting from horseback also had the advantages of greater height, speed, another element of horse mounted warfare is the psychological impact a mounted soldier can inflict on an opponent. In Europe cavalry became increasingly armoured, and eventually became known for the mounted knights, in the period between the World Wars, many cavalry units were converted into motorized infantry and mechanized infantry units, or reformed as tank troops. Most cavalry units that are horse-mounted in modern armies serve in purely ceremonial roles, modern usage of the term generally refers to specialist units equipped with tanks or aircraft. The shock role, traditionally filled by heavy cavalry, is filled by units with the armored designation. Before the Iron Age, the role of cavalry on the battlefield was largely performed by light chariots, the chariot originated with the Sintashta-Petrovka culture in Central Asia and spread by nomadic or semi-nomadic Indo-Iranians. The power of mobility given by mounted units was recognized early on, Cavalry techniques were an innovation of equestrian nomads of the Central Asian and Iranian steppe and pastoralist tribes such as the Persian Parthians and Sarmatians. The photograph above left shows Assyrian cavalry from reliefs of 865–860 BC, at this time, the men had no spurs, saddles, saddle cloths, or stirrups. Fighting from the back of a horse was more difficult than mere riding. The cavalry acted in pairs, the reins of the archer were controlled by his neighbours hand. Even at this time, cavalry used swords, shields. The sculpture implies two types of cavalry, but this might be a simplification by the artist, Later images of Assyrian cavalry show saddle cloths as primitive saddles, allowing each archer to control his own horse. As early as 490 BC a breed of horses was bred in the Nisaean plain in Media to carry men with increasing amounts of armour. However, chariots remained in use for purposes such as carrying the victorious general in a Roman triumph. The southern Britons met Julius Caesar with chariots in 55 and 54 BC, the last mention of chariot use in battle was by the Caledonians at the Mons Graupius, in 84 AD. During the classical Greek period cavalry were usually limited to citizens who could afford expensive war-horses

18.
Electronic warfare
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Electronic warfare is any action involving the use of the electromagnetic spectrum or directed energy to control the spectrum, attack of an enemy, or impede enemy assaults via the spectrum. The purpose of warfare is to deny the opponent the advantage of, and ensure friendly unimpeded access to. EW can be applied from air, sea, land, and space by manned and unmanned systems, Military operations are executed in an information environment increasingly complicated by the electromagnetic spectrum. The electromagnetic spectrum portion of the environment is referred to as the electromagnetic environment. Within the information operations construct, EW is an element of warfare, more specifically. NATO has a different and arguably more encompassing and comprehensive approach to EW, a Military Committee conceptual document from 2007 recognised the EME as an operational manoeuvre space and warfighting environment/domain. In NATO, EW is considered to be warfare in the EME, NATO has adopted simplified language which parallel those used in the other warfighting environments like maritime, land and air/space. For example, Electronic Attack is offensive use of EM energy, ED is electronic defence and ES electronic surveillance. The use of the traditional NATO EW measures has been retained as they contribute to and support EA, ED, besides EW, other EM operations include ISTAR and SIGINT. Subsequently NATO has issued EW Policy and Doctrine and is addressing the other NATO defence lines of development, Electronic warfare is any military action involving the use of the EM spectrum to include directed energy to control the EM spectrum or to attack an enemy. This is not limited to radio or radar frequencies but includes IR, visible, ultraviolet and this includes self-protection, standoff, and escort jamming, and antiradiation attacks. EW is a tool that enhances many air and space functions at multiple levels of conflict. The purpose of EW is to deny the opponent an advantage in the EM spectrum, EW can be applied from air, sea, land, and space by manned and unmanned systems. EW is employed to support operations involving various levels of detection, denial, deception, disruption, degradation, protection. Expanding reliance on the EM spectrum increases both the potential and the challenges of EW in information operations, all of the core, supporting, and related information operations capabilities either directly use EW or indirectly benefit from EW. The principal EW activities have developed over time to exploit the opportunities and vulnerabilities that are inherent in the physics of EM energy. Electronic warfare includes three major subdivisions, electronic attack, electronic protection, and electronic warfare support, in the case of EM energy, this action is referred to as jamming and can be performed on communications systems or radar systems. Jamming is not part of EP, it is an EA measure, the use of flare rejection logic on an Infrared homing missile to counter an adversary’s use of flares is EP

19.
Infantry
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Infantry is the general branch of an army that engages in military combat on foot. As the troops who engage with the enemy in close-ranged combat, infantry units bear the largest brunt of warfare, Infantry can enter and maneuver in terrain that is inaccessible to military vehicles and employ crew-served infantry weapons that provide greater and more sustained firepower. In English, the 16th-century term Infantry describes soldiers who walk to the battlefield, and there engage, fight, the term arose in Sixteenth-Century Spain, which boasted one of the first professional standing armies seen in Europe since the days of Rome. It was common to appoint royal princes to military commands, and the men under them became known as Infanteria. in the Canadian Army, the role of the infantry is to close with, and destroy the enemy. In the U. S. Army, the closes with the enemy, by means of fire and maneuver, in order to destroy or capture him, or to repel his assault by fire, close combat. In the U. S. Marine Corps, the role of the infantry is to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy fire and maneuver. Beginning with the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, artillery has become a dominant force on the battlefield. Since World War I, combat aircraft and armoured vehicles have become dominant. In 20th and 21st century warfare, infantry functions most effectively as part of a combined arms team including artillery, armour, Infantry relies on organized formations to be employed in battle. These have evolved over time, but remain a key element to effective infantry development and deployment, until the end of the 19th century, infantry units were for the most part employed in close formations up until contact with the enemy. This allowed commanders to control of the unit, especially while maneuvering. The development of guns and other weapons with increased firepower forced infantry units to disperse in order to make them less vulnerable to such weapons. This decentralization of command was made possible by improved communications equipment, among the various subtypes of infantry is Medium infantry. This refers to infantry which are heavily armed and armored than heavy infantry. In the early period, medium infantry were largely eliminated due to discontinued use of body armour up until the 20th century. In the United States Army, Stryker Infantry is considered Medium Infantry, since they are heavier than light infantry, Infantry doctrine is the concise expression of how infantry forces contribute to campaigns, major operations, battles, and engagements. It is a guide to action, not a set of hard, doctrine provides a very common frame of reference across the military forces, allowing the infantry to function cooperatively in what are now called combined arms operations. Doctrine helps standardise operations, facilitating readiness by establishing common ways of accomplishing infantry tasks, doctrine links theory, history, experimentation, and practice

20.
Nuclear warfare
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Nuclear warfare is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is used to inflict damage on the enemy. In contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can produce destruction in a much shorter time-frame, some activists had claimed in the 1980s that with this potential nuclear winter side-effect of a nuclear war, almost every human on Earth could starve to death. So far, two nuclear weapons have been used in the course of warfare, both by the United States near the end of World War II, on August 6,1945, a uranium gun-type device was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, on August 9, a plutonium device was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki. These two bombings resulted in the deaths of approximately 120,000 people, in 1974, India, and in 1998, Pakistan, two countries that were openly hostile toward each other, developed nuclear weapons. Israel and North Korea are also thought to have developed stocks of nuclear weapons, the Israeli government has never admitted to having nuclear weapons, although it is known to have constructed the reactor and reprocessing plant necessary for building nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons have been detonated on over 2,000 occasions for testing purposes, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the resultant end of the Cold War, the threat of a major nuclear war between the two nuclear superpowers was generally thought to have declined. Since then, concern over nuclear weapons has shifted to the prevention of localized nuclear conflicts resulting from nuclear proliferation, the possibility of using nuclear weapons in war is usually divided into two subgroups, each with different effects and potentially fought with different types of nuclear armaments. The first, a nuclear war, refers to a small-scale use of nuclear weapons by two belligerents. This term could apply to any use of nuclear weapons that may involve military or civilian targets. The second, a nuclear war, could consist of large numbers of nuclear weapons used in an attack aimed at an entire country, including military, economic. Such an attack would almost certainly destroy the economic, social, and military infrastructure of the target nation. Some Cold War strategists such as Henry Kissinger argued that a nuclear war could be possible between two heavily armed superpowers. Some predict, however, that a war could potentially escalate into a full-scale nuclear war. Even the most optimistic predictions of the effects of a nuclear exchange foresee the death of many millions of victims within a very short period of time. However, such predictions, assuming total war with nuclear arsenals at Cold War highs, have not been without criticism. The authors of the study estimated that as much as five tons of soot could be released, producing a cooling of several degrees over large areas of North America. The cooling would last for years and could be catastrophic, according to the researchers, either a limited or full-scale nuclear exchange could occur during an accidental nuclear war, in which the use of nuclear weapons is triggered unintentionally

21.
Psychological warfare
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The term is used to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people. Various techniques are used, and are aimed at influencing a target audiences value system, belief system, emotions, motives, reasoning, or behavior. It is used to induce confessions or reinforce attitudes and behaviors favorable to the originators objectives and it is also used to destroy the morale of enemies through tactics that aim to depress troops psychological states. Target audiences can be governments, organizations, groups, and individuals, civilians of foreign territories can also be targeted by technology and media so as to cause an effect in the government of their country. In Propaganda, The Formation of Mens Attitudes, Jacques Ellul discusses psychological warfare as a peace policy practice between nations as a form of indirect aggression. This type of propaganda drains the public opinion of a regime by stripping away its power on public opinion. This form of aggression is hard to defend against because no court of justice is capable of protecting against psychological aggression since it cannot be legally adjudicated. Here the propagandists is dealing with an adversary whose morale he seeks to destroy by psychological means so that the opponent begins to doubt the validity of his beliefs. Since prehistoric times, warlords and chiefs have recognised the importance of inducing psychological terror in opponents, facing armies would shout, hurl insults at each other and beat weapons together or on shields prior to an engagement, all designed to intimidate the enemy. Massacres and other atrocities were certainly first employed at this time to subdue enemy or rebellious populations or induce an enemy to abandon their struggle, alexander left some of his men behind in each conquered city to introduce Greek culture and oppress dissident views. His soldiers were paid dowries to marry locals in an effort to encourage assimilation, genghis Khan, leader of the Mongolian Empire in the 13th century AD employed less subtle techniques. Defeating the will of the enemy before having to attack and reaching a settlement was preferable to actually fighting. The Mongol generals demanded submission to the Khan, and threatened the initially captured villages with complete destruction if they refused to surrender, if they had to fight to take the settlement, the Mongol generals fulfilled their threats and massacred the survivors. Tales of the encroaching horde spread to the villages and created an aura of insecurity that undermined the possibility of future resistance. The Khan also employed tactics that made his numbers seem greater than actually were. During night operations he ordered each soldier to light three torches at dusk to give the illusion of an army and deceive and intimidate enemy scouts. He also sometimes had objects tied to the tails of his horses, so that riding on open and his soldiers used arrows specially notched to whistle as they flew through the air, creating a terrifying noise. Another tactic favoured by the Mongols was catapulting severed human heads over city walls to frighten the inhabitants and this was especially used by the later Turko-Mongol chieftain

22.
Unconventional warfare
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Unconventional warfare is the opposite of conventional warfare. The general objective of unconventional warfare is to instill a belief that peace, two original definition are claiming, The intent of U. S. The ultimate goal of this type of warfare is to motivate an enemy to stop attacking or resisting even if it has the ability to continue, failing this, a secondary objective can be to debilitate the enemy before a conventional attack. Limited conventional warfare tactics can be used unconventionally to demonstrate might, in addition to the surgical application of traditional weapons, other armaments that specifically target military can be used are, nuclear weapons, incendiary devices, or other such weapons. Special Forces, inserted deep behind enemy lines, are used unconventionally to train, equip and they can also spread subversion and propaganda, while they aid native resistance fighters, to ultimately cause a hostile government to capitulate. Tactics focus on destroying military targets while avoiding damage to civilian infrastructure, guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism, 1940–1990 Pentagon plans cyber-insect army

23.
Military tactics
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Military tactics are the science and art of organizing a military force, and the techniques for combining and using weapons and military units to engage and defeat an enemy in battle. Changes in philosophy and technology have been reflected in changes to military tactics, in contemporary military science, tactics are the lowest of three planning levels, strategic, operational, and tactical. The highest level of planning is strategy, how force is translated into political objectives by bridging the means, the intermediate level, operational, the conversion of strategy into tactics, deals with formations of units. Military tactics answer the questions of how best to deploy and employ forces on a small scale, some practices have not changed since the dawn of warfare, assault, ambushes, skirmishing, turning flanks, reconnaissance, creating and using obstacles and defenses, etc. Using ground to best advantage has not changed much either, heights, rivers, swamps, passes, choke points, and natural cover, can all be used in multiple ways. Before the nineteenth century, many tactics were confined to battlefield concerns. Nowadays, specialized tactics exist for many situations, for example for securing a room in a building, technological changes can render existing tactics obsolete, and sociological changes can shift the goals and methods of warfare, requiring new tactics. Tactics define how soldiers are armed and trained, each – constrained by his weaponry, logistics and social conditioning – would use a battlefield differently, but would usually seek the same outcomes from their use of tactics. The First World War forced great changes in tactics as advances in technology rendered prior tactics useless, list of military tactics Combat arms Johnson, Rob, Michael Whitby, John France. How to win on the battlefield,25 key tactics to outwit, outflank, cS1 maint, Multiple names, authors list Muhm, Gerhard. German Tactics in the Italian Campaign, Gerhard Muhm, La Tattica nella campagna ass d’Italia, in LINEA GOTICA AVAMPOSTO DEI BALCANI, Amedeo Montemaggi - Edizioni Civitas, Roma 1993. Contemporary Marine tactics for war fighting Napoleons tactics and strategy Small Unit Actions during German Campaign in Russia

24.
Air combat manoeuvring
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Air combat manoeuvring is the tactical art of moving, turning and/or situating ones fighter aircraft in order to attain a position from which an attack can be made on another aircraft. Air combat manoeuvres rely on offensive and defensive basic fighter manoeuvring to gain an advantage over an aerial opponent, military aviation appeared in World War I where aircraft were initially used to spot enemy troop concentrations, field gun positions and movements. Early aerial combat consisted of shooting at one another with hand held weapons. The first recorded aircraft to be shot down by another aircraft, the pilot, Feldwebel Wilhelm Schlichting, was shot with a hand gun wielded by observer Louis Quenault, who was riding in a Voisin Type 3 piloted by French Sergeant Joseph Frantz. The need to stop reconnaissance that was being conducted by enemy aircraft rapidly led to the development of fighter planes, roland Garros, working with Morane Saulnier Aéroplanes, was the first to solve this problem by attaching steel deflector wedges to the propeller. He achieved three kills but was shot down by fire and landed behind German lines. As technology rapidly advanced, new and young aviators began defining the realm of combat, such as Max Immelmann, Oswald Boelcke. A flying man may be able to loop and do all the stunts imaginable and this type of combat became known as dogfighting. Oswald Boelcke, a German fighter ace during World War I, was the first to publish the rules for aerial combat manoeuvring in 1916. He advised pilots to attack from the direction of the sun, most of these rules are still as valuable today as they were a century ago. New, and additional types of manoeuvres have emerged, intending to break radar lock by minimizing the Doppler signature of ones own aircraft, or to exhaust the kinetic energy of an incoming missile. However, close fighting with infrared guided missiles and aircraft cannons still obeys the same general rules laid down in the skies over Europe in the early 20th century. The master rule is still the same, do not let your opponent get onto your six, close-range combat tactics vary considerably according to the type of aircraft being used and the number of aircraft involved. There are five things a pilot must remain aware of when contemplating aerial engagement, of which, getting sight of your opponent. In Southeast Asia, over 85% of all kills are attributed to the spotting and shooting the defender without ever being seen. Structural limitations of both the attacking and defending fighters must be taken into account, such as thrust-to-weight ratio, wing loading, variable limitations must also be considered, such as turn radius, turn rate, and the specific energy of the aircraft. Position of aircraft must quickly be assessed, including direction, angle off tail, also, the pilot must be aware of his wingman’s position, and maintain good communication. A pilot in combat attempts to conserve his aircraft’s energy through carefully timed and executed manoeuvres, a manoeuvre such as the low yo-yo trades altitude for airspeed to gain closure on an enemy, and to decrease turn radius

25.
Battle
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A battle is a combat in warfare between two or more armed forces, or combatants. A war sometimes consists of many battles, Battles generally are well defined in duration, area, and force commitment. Wars and military campaigns are guided by strategy, whereas battles take place on a level of planning, German strategist Carl von Clausewitz stated that the employment of battles. To achieve the object of war was the essence of strategy, where the duration of the battle is longer than a week, it is often for reasons of staff operational planning called an operation. Battles can be planned, encountered, or forced by one force on the other when the latter is unable to withdraw from combat, a battle always has as its purpose the reaching of a mission goal by use of military force. However, a battle may end in a Pyrrhic victory, which favors the defeated party. If no resolution is reached in a battle, it can result in a stalemate, a conflict in which one side is unwilling to reach a decision by a direct battle using conventional warfare often becomes an insurgency. Until the 19th century the majority of battles were of short duration and this was mainly due to the difficulty of supplying armies in the field, or conducting night operations. The means of prolonging a battle was typically by employment of siege warfare, improvements in transportation and the sudden evolving of trench warfare, with its siege-like nature during World War I in the 20th century, lengthened the duration of battles to days and weeks. This created the requirement for unit rotation to prevent combat fatigue, trench warfare had become largely obsolete in conflicts between advanced armies by the start of the Second World War. The space a battle depends on the range of the weapons of the combatants. A battle in this sense may be of long duration and take place over a large area. Until the advent of artillery and aircraft, battles were fought with the two sides within sight, if not reach, of each other. Conversely, some of the Allied infantry who had just dealt a defeat to the French at the Battle of Waterloo fully expected to have to fight again the next day. Battlespace is a strategy to integrate and combine armed forces for the military theatre of operations, including air, information, land, sea. It includes the environment, factors and conditions that must be understood to successfully apply combat power, protect the force and this includes enemy and friendly armed forces, facilities, weather, terrain, and the electromagnetic spectrum within the operational areas and areas of interest. Battles are decided by various factors, the number and quality of combatants and equipment, the skill of the commanders of each army, and the terrain advantages are among the most prominent factors. A unit may charge with high morale but less discipline and still emerge victorious and this tactic was effectively used by the early French Revolutionary Armies

26.
Cavalry tactics
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For much of history, humans have used some form of cavalry for war and, as a result, cavalry tactics have evolved over time. Tactically, the advantages of cavalry over infantry troops were greater mobility, a larger impact. Before the invention of saddle and stirrups, which riders to reasonably maneuver on horseback. The chariots advantage of speed was outdone by the agility of riding on horseback, the ability of horsemen to pass more difficult terrain was also crucial to this change. In Celtic warfare, light chariots persisted among mounted troops, for their ability to heavily armoured warriors. At first it was not considered effective to use weapons on horseback, mounted infantry would ride to battle, and then dismount to fight. For a long time, riders and charioteers worked alongside each other in the cavalry, the first recorded instance of mounted warriors are the mounted archers of the Iranian tribes appearing in Assyrian records from the 9th century BC. Mongolian troops had a Buryat bow, for showering the enemy with arrows from a safe distance. The aim on horseback was better than in a jiggling chariot, nevertheless, an archer in a chariot could shoot potentially stronger infantry bows. Javelins were employed as a ranged weapon by many cavalries. They were easy to handle on horseback, two to ten javelins would be carried, depending on their weight. Thrown javelins have less range than composite bows, but often prevailed in use nevertheless, due to the mass of the weapon, there was a greater armour-piercing ability, and they thus caused fatal wounds more frequently. Usage is reported for both light and heavy cavalry, for example, by Numidia and the Mongols light cavalry and the heavy cataphracts, Celtic cavalry, the Celtic horsemens training was copied by the Roman equites. A significant element learned from the Celts was turning on horseback to throw javelins backwards, modern historical reenactors have shown that neither the stirrup nor the saddle are strictly necessary for the effective use of the couched lance, refuting a previously widely held belief. Free movement of the rider on horseback were highly esteemed for light cavalry to shoot and fight in all directions, andalusian light cavalry refused to employ them until the 12th century, nor were they used by the Baltic turcopoles of the Teutonic Order in the battle of Legnica. An example of combined arms and the efficiency of cavalry forces were the Medieval Mongols, important for their horse archery was the use of stirrups for the archer to stand while shooting. This new position enabled them to use larger and stronger cavalry bows than the enemy, armies of horse archers could cover enemy troops with arrows from a distance and never had to engage in close combat. Slower enemies without effective long range weapons often had no chance against them and it was in this manner that the cavalry of the Parthian Empire destroyed the troops of Crassus in the Battle of Carrhae

27.
Charge (warfare)
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A charge is a maneuver in battle in which combatants advance towards their enemy at their best speed in an attempt to engage in close combat. The charge is the dominant shock attack and has been the key tactic, modern charges usually involve small groups against individual positions instead of large groups of combatants charging another group or a fortified line. It may be assumed that the charge was practised in prehistoric warfare, the tactics of the classical Greek phalanx included an ordered approach march, with a final charge to contact. Initially successful, it was countered by effective discipline and the development of defensive bayonet tactics, the development of the bayonet in the late 17th century led to the bayonet charge becoming the main infantry charge tactic through the 19th century and into the 20th. As early as the 19th century, tactical scholars were already noting that most bayonet charges did not result in close combat, instead, one side usually fled before actual bayonet fighting ensued. The act of fixing bayonets has been held to be connected to morale. The shock value of an attack has been especially exploited in cavalry tactics. However, when cavalry charges succeeded, it was due to the defending formation breaking up and scattering. It must be noted, though, that while it was not recommended for a charge to continue against unbroken infantry. The cavalry charge was a significant tactic in the Middle Ages and these developments began in the 7th century but were not combined to full effect until the 11th century. The Battle of Dyrrhachium was an instance of the familiar medieval cavalry charge. By the time of the First Crusade in the 1090s, the charge was being employed widely by European armies. It became increasingly common for knights to dismount and fight as heavy infantry. The use of cavalry for flanking manoeuvres became more useful, although interpretations of the knightly ideal often led to reckless. Cavalry could still charge dense heavy infantry formations head-on if the cavalrymen had a combination of certain traits, however, the majority of cavalry personnel lacked at least one of these traits, particularly discipline, formations, and horses trained for head-on charges. In the twentieth century, the charge was seldom used, though it enjoyed sporadic. In what was called the last true cavalry charge, elements of the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States attacked Villista forces in the Battle of Guerrero on 29 March 1916. The battle was a victory for the Americans, occurring in desert terrain, at the Mexican town of Vicente Guerrero, Chihuahua

28.
Counterattack
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A counterattack is a tactic employed in response to an attack, with the term originating in war games. The general objective is to negate or thwart the advantage gained by the enemy during attack, a saying, attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte illustrate the tactical importance of the counterattack, the greatest danger occurs at the moment of victory. Counter-offensive Battleplan United States Department of Defense, Dictionary of Military, published by, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. The Clay Pigeons of St. Lo

29.
Counter-insurgency
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According to the U. S. Insurgency is the organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify or challenge political control of a region. As such, it is primarily a struggle, in which both sides use armed force to create space for their political, economic and influence activities to be effective. Counter-insurgency is normally conducted as a combination of military operations and other means, such as demoralization in the form of propaganda, psy-ops. Counter-insurgency operations include many different facets, military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, to understand counter-insurgency, one must understand insurgency to comprehend the dynamics of revolutionary warfare. Insurgents capitalize on societal problems, often called gaps, counter-insurgency addresses closing the gaps, when the gaps are wide, they create a sea of discontent, creating the environment in which the insurgent can operate. He defines this distinction as Maoist and post-Maoist insurgency, caldwell wrote, The law of armed conflict requires that, to use force, combatants must distinguish individuals presenting a threat from innocent civilians. This basic principle is accepted by all disciplined militaries, in the counterinsurgency, disciplined application of force is even more critical because our enemies camouflage themselves in the civilian population. The third Marques of Santa Cruz de Marcenado is probably the earliest author who dealt systematically in his writings with counter-insurgency, strikingly, Santa Cruz recognized that insurgencies are usually due to real grievances, A state rarely rises up without the fault of its governors. Consequently, he advocated clemency towards the population and good governance, to seek the peoples heart, the majority of counter-insurgency efforts by major powers in the last century have been spectacularly unsuccessful. This may be attributed to a number of causes and he showed as a prime example the French occupation of Spain during the Napoleonic wars. Whenever Spanish forces managed to constitute themselves into a fighting force. However, once dispersed and decentralized, the nature of the rebel campaigns proved a decisive counter to French superiority on the battlefield. Counter-insurgency efforts may be successful, especially when the insurgents are unpopular, the Philippine–American War, the Shining Path in Peru, and the Malayan Emergency in Malaya have been the sites of failed insurgencies. Hart also points to the experiences of T. E. Lawrence, in both the preceding cases, the insurgents and rebel fighters were working in conjunction with or in a manner complementary to regular forces. Such was also the case with the French Resistance during World War II, the strategy in these cases is for the irregular combatant to weaken and destabilize the enemy to such a degree that victory is easy or assured for the regular forces. However, in many rebellions, one does not see rebel fighters working in conjunction with regular forces. Rather, they are home-grown militias or imported fighters who have no unified goals or objectives save to expel the occupier, according to Liddell Hart, there are few effective counter-measures to this strategy. So long as the insurgency maintains popular support, it will all of its strategic advantages of mobility, invisibility, and legitimacy in its own eyes

30.
Cover (military)
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In military combat, the concept of cover refers to anything which is capable of physically protecting an individual from enemy fire. An example of cover vs. concealment would be sandbags vs. tall grass, cover may be a naturally occurring feature, such as a rock or a tree stump, or it may be a constructed feature, such as a foxhole or a trench. In some military services, a hat is sometimes referred to officially as a cover, as in Hey soldier. Or Youre not in uniform without your cover and it is a convention in the U. S. Army that an armed soldier must wear cover while indoors to indicate that they are under arms. Many first and third-person shooter video games encourage the player to utilize cover and this gameplay mechanic is often referred to as a cover system

31.
Defensive fighting position
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A defensive fighting position is a type of earthwork constructed in a military context, generally large enough to accommodate anything from one man to a small number of soldiers. The Tobruk name may have derived from its initial conception or idea by Rommel in the Siege of Tobruk, a foxhole is one type of defensive strategic position. It is a pit used for cover, usually for one or two men, and so constructed that the occupants can effectively fire from it. It is known more commonly within United States Army slang as a position or as a ranger grave. It is known as a hole in the United States Marine Corps, a Gun-Pit in Australian Army terminology. In British and Canadian military argot it equates to a range of terms including slit trench, or fire trench, during the American Civil War the term rifle pit was recognized by both U. S. Army and Confederate Army forces. During the fighting in North Africa Specifically in Tobruk - Libya and this was a very shallow excavation allowing one man to lie horizontally while shielding his body from nearby shell bursts and small arms fire. The slit trench soon proved inadequate in this role, as the few inches of dirt above the body could often be penetrated by bullets or shell fragments. It also exposed the user to assault by tanks, which could crush the man inside a shallow slit trench by driving into it. After the Battle of Kasserine Pass, U. S. troops increasingly adopted the modern foxhole, the foxhole widened near the bottom to allow a soldier to crouch down while under intense artillery fire or tank attack. Foxholes could be enlarged to two-soldier fighting positions, as well as excavated with firing steps for crew-served weapons or sumps for water drainage or live enemy grenade disposal. The Germans used hardened fortifications in North Africa and later in other fortifications, such as the Atlantic Wall, the Germans knew them officially as Ringstände, the Allies called them Tobruks because they had first encountered the structures during the fighting in Africa. Frequently, the Germans put a turret from an obsolete French or German tank on the foxhole and this gave the Tobruk enhanced firepower and the gunner protection from shrapnel and small arms. Modern militaries publish and distribute elaborate field manuals for the construction of DFPs in stages. Initially, a shell scrape is dug, much like a very shallow grave. Each stage develops the fighting position, gradually increasing its effectiveness, in this way, a soldier can improve the position over time, while being able to stop at any time and use the position in a fight. The fire step usually slopes down into a narrow slit called a grenade sump at the bottom to allow for live grenades to be kicked in to minimize damage from grenade fragments. When possible, DFPs are revetted with corrugated iron, star pickets, ideally, the revetting will also be dug in below ground level so as to minimise damage from fire and tank tracks

32.
Guerrilla warfare
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The term, the diminutive form of war in Spanish, is usually translated as little war, and the word, guerrilla, has been used to refer to the concept since the 18th century, and perhaps earlier. In correct Spanish usage, a person who is a member of a guerrilla is a guerrillero if male, the term guerrilla was used in English as early as 1809, to refer to the fighters, and also to denote a group or band of such fighters. However, in most languages guerrilla still denotes the style of warfare. The use of the diminutive evokes the differences in number, scale, guerrillas usually carries positive connotations, and is often used by such fighters themselves and by their sympathizers, while their foes in many cases call them terrorists. Making an objective definition of the difference between a guerrilla and a terrorist has proven a difficult task, the strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare tend to focus around the use of a small, mobile force competing against a larger, more unwieldy one. The Guerrilla focuses on organizing in small units, depending on the support of the local population, tactically, the guerrilla army would avoid any confrontation with large units of enemy troops, but seek and eliminate small groups of soldiers to minimize losses and exhaust the opposing force. Not limiting their targets to personnel, enemy resources are preferred targets. All of that is to weaken the strength, to cause the enemy eventually to be unable to prosecute the war any longer. It is often misunderstood that guerrilla warfare must involve disguising as civilians to cause enemy troops to fail in telling friend from foe, however, this is not a primary feature of a guerrilla war. This type of war can be practiced anywhere there are places for combatants to cover themselves, at least one author credits the ancient Chinese work The Art of War with providing instruction in such tactics to Mao. The Chinese general and strategist Sun Tzu, in his The Art of War or 600 BC to 501 BC, was the earliest to propose the use of guerrilla warfare and this directly inspired the development of modern guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla tactics were employed by prehistoric tribal warriors against enemy tribes. Evidence of conventional warfare, on the hand, did not emerge until 3100 BC in Egypt. Since the Enlightenment, ideologies such as nationalism, liberalism, socialism, because of the innovative tactics he used during his command, he made himself the name of Terror Romanorum. A counter-insurgency or counterinsurgency operation involves actions taken by the government of a nation to contain or quell an insurgency taken up against it. Counter-insurgency operations are common during war, occupation and armed rebellions, the two most influential of scholars of counter-insurgency have been Westerners whose job it had been to fight insurgents. Robert Thompson fought during the Malayan Emergency and David Galula fought during the Algerian War, together these officers advocated multi-pronged strategies to win over the civilian population to the side of the counter-insurgent. The widely distributed and influential work of Sir Robert Thompson, counter-insurgency expert of the Malayan Emergency, thompsons underlying assumption was that the counter-insurgent was committed to improving the rule of law and bettering local governance

33.
Siege
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A siege is a military blockade of a city or fortress with the intent of conquering by attrition or assault. This derives from sedere, Latin for to sit, Siege warfare is a form of constant, low-intensity conflict characterized by one party holding a strong, static defensive position. Consequently, an opportunity for negotiation between combatants is not uncommon, as proximity and fluctuating advantage can encourage diplomacy, a siege occurs when an attacker encounters a city or fortress that cannot be easily taken by direct assault and refuses to surrender. Failing a military outcome, sieges can often be decided by starvation, thirst, or disease and this form of siege, though, can take many months or even years, depending upon the size of the stores of food the fortified position holds. During the process of circumvallation, the force can be set upon by another force of enemies due to the lengthy amount of time required to starve a position. During the Warring States era of ancient China, there is textual and archaeological evidence of prolonged sieges and siege machinery used against the defenders of city walls. Siege machinery was also a tradition of the ancient Greco-Roman world, during the Renaissance and the early modern period, siege warfare dominated the conduct of war in Europe. Leonardo da Vinci gained as much of his renown from the design of fortifications as from his artwork, Medieval campaigns were generally designed around a succession of sieges. In the Napoleonic era, increasing use of more powerful cannon reduced the value of fortifications. In the 20th century, the significance of the classical siege declined, with the advent of mobile warfare, a single fortified stronghold is no longer as decisive as it once was. Modern sieges are more commonly the result of smaller hostage, militant, the Assyrians deployed large labour forces to build new palaces, temples, and defensive walls. Some settlements in the Indus Valley Civilization were also fortified, by about 3500 BC, hundreds of small farming villages dotted the Indus River floodplain. Many of these settlements had fortifications and planned streets, mundigak in present-day south-east Afghanistan has defensive walls and square bastions of sun-dried bricks. City walls and fortifications were essential for the defence of the first cities in the ancient Near East, the walls were built of mudbricks, stone, wood, or a combination of these materials, depending on local availability. They may also have served the purpose of showing presumptive enemies the might of the kingdom. The great walls surrounding the Sumerian city of Uruk gained a widespread reputation, the walls were 9.5 km in length, and up to 12 m in height. Later, the walls of Babylon, reinforced by towers, moats, in Anatolia, the Hittites built massive stone walls around their cities atop hillsides, taking advantage of the terrain. In Shang Dynasty China, at the site of Ao, large walls were erected in the 15th century BC that had dimensions of 20 m in width at the base and enclosed an area of some 2,100 yards squared

34.
Swarming (military)
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Military swarming is a battlefield tactic designed to overwhelm or saturate the defenses of the principal target or objective. On the other-hand, defenders can overcome attempts at swarming, by launching counter-swarming measures that are designed to neutralize or otherwise repel such attacks, Military swarming is often encountered in asymmetric warfare where opposing forces are not of the same size, or capacity. In such situations, swarming involves the use of a force against an opponent, in a manner that emphasizes mobility, communication, unit autonomy. In nature and nonmilitary situations, there are various forms of swarming. Biologically driven forms are often complex systems, but have no central planning, simple individual rules. Current military explorations into swarming address the spectrum of military operations, an expert group evaluated swarmings role in the revolution in military affairs or force transformation. They observed that military swarming is primarily tactical, sometimes operational and rarely strategic, swarming is a logical extension of network-centric warfare, but the networks needed to make swarming routine will be available around 2010-2011. At present, the networking for swarming is only available in specific contexts, enthusiasts of swarming sometimes apply it to situations that have superficial similarities, but really do not qualify as swarms. While swarms do converge on a target, not every military action, other conflicts, especially historical ones, fit a swarming paradigm, but the commanders involved did not use the concept. Nevertheless, historical examples help illustrate what modern analysts do and do not consider swarming, bactrian horse archers surrounded various Macedonian phalanxes, staying out of range of their melee weapons, and fired arrows until they had no more. The archers would then withdraw to a point, but another swarm of horse archers would sometimes replace them. The Bactrians eventually caused the phalanx to break formation, and destroyed it, Alexander recognized his forces could not directly combat horse archers, but that the horse archers needed resupply of provisions, horses, and arrows. Alexander split his forces into five columns and began building fortifications in the areas where the Bactrians had resupplied, eventually, his anti-swarm tactics worked, cut off from resupply, the Bactrians had to meet the Macedonian phalanx, which were vastly superior in melee. Alexander made it priority to engage guerillas or other mobile forces. Spitamenes was effective as long as his force were mobile, once he was forced into direct battle with heavy forces, he literally lost his head. At the Battle of the Jaxartes River, Alexander once again faced swarming tactics from an army of Scythian horse archers, Alexander sent a unit of heavy cavalry ahead of his main line. As expected, the Scythian horsemen surrounded the detached cavalry, at the right moment, Alexanders cavalry reversed direction and pushed half of the Scythians straight into the main phalanx of Alexanders army, where they were slaughtered. Upon seeing this, the half of the Scythian army retreated from the battle

35.
Trench warfare
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The most famous use of trench warfare is the Western Front in World War I. It has become a byword for stalemate, attrition, sieges, Trench warfare occurred when a revolution in firepower was not matched by similar advances in mobility, resulting in a grueling form of warfare in which the defender held the advantage. On the Western Front in 1914–18, both sides constructed elaborate trench and dugout systems opposing each other along a front, protected from assault by barbed wire, mines, the area between opposing trench lines was fully exposed to artillery fire from both sides. Attacks, even if successful, often sustained severe casualties, with the development of armoured warfare, emphasis on trench warfare has declined, but still occurs where battle-lines become static. Field works are as old as armies, Roman legions, when in the presence of an enemy, entrenched camps nightly when on the move. In the early modern era they were used to block possible lines of advance and they played a pivotal role in manoeuvring that took place before the Battle of Blenheim. The lines were captured by the French in 1707 and demolished, the French built the 19-kilometre-long Lines of Weissenburg during the War of the Spanish Succession under the orders of the Duke of Villars in 1706. These were to remain in existence for just over 100 years and were last manned during Napoleons Hundred Days, the French built the Lines of Ne Plus Ultra during the winter of 1710–1711, which have been compared to the trenches of World War I. They ran from Arras to Cambrai and Valenciennes where they linked up with existing defensive lines fronted by the river Sambre and they were breached in the 1711 campaign season by the Duke of Marlborough through a magnificent piece of manoeuvring. During the Peninsular War, the British and Portuguese constructed the Lines of Torres Vedras in 1809 and 1810, nor were fortifications restricted to European powers. British casualty rates of up to 45 percent, such as at the Battle of Ohaeawai in 1845, proved contemporary firepower was insufficient to dislodge defenders from a trench system. Fundamentally, as the range and rate of fire of rifled small arms increased and this was only made more lethal by the introduction of rapid-firing artillery, exemplified by the French 75, and high explosive fragmentation rounds. The increases in firepower had outstripped the ability of infantry to cover the ground between firing lines, and the ability of armour to withstand fire and it would take a revolution in mobility to change that. Trench warfare is associated with the First World War of 1914–18. Both sides concentrated on breaking up attacks and on protecting their own troops by digging deep into the ground. Trench warfare was conducted on other fronts, including Italy. Trench warfare has become a symbol of the futility of war. To the French, the equivalent is the attrition of the Battle of Verdun in which the French Army suffered 380,000 casualties, Trench warfare is associated with mass slaughter in appalling conditions

36.
Blitzkrieg
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During the Invasion of Poland, Western journalists adopted the term blitzkrieg to describe this form of armoured warfare. The term had appeared in 1935, in a German military periodical Deutsche Wehr, German manoeuvre operations were successful in the campaigns of 1939–1941 and by 1940 the term blitzkrieg was extensively used in Western media. Blitzkrieg operations capitalized on surprise penetrations, general enemy unreadiness and their inability to match the pace of the German attack, during the Battle of France, the French made attempts to re-form defensive lines along rivers but were frustrated when German forces arrived first and pressed on. Despite being common in German and English-language journalism during World War II, some senior officers, including Kurt Student, Franz Halder and Johann Adolf von Kielmansegg, even disputed the idea that it was a military concept. Kielmansegg asserted that many regarded as blitzkrieg was nothing more than ad hoc solutions that simply popped out of the prevailing situation. Student described it as ideas that emerged from the existing circumstances as a response to operational challenges. The Wehrmacht never officially adopted it as a concept or doctrine, modern historians use the term casually as a generic description for the style of manoeuvre warfare practised by Germany during the early part of World War II, rather than as an explanation. According to Frieser, in the context of the thinking of Heinz Guderian on mobile combined arms formations, blitzkrieg can be used as a synonym for modern manoeuvre warfare on the operational level. The traditional meaning of blitzkrieg is that of German tactical and operational methodology in the first half of the Second World War, that is often hailed as a new method of warfare. The word, meaning lightning war, in its strategic sense describes a series of quick, the devices were largely removed when the enemy became used to the noise after the Battle of France in 1940 and instead bombs sometimes had whistles attached. It is also common for historians and writers to include psychological warfare by using Fifth columnists to spread rumours, the origin of the term blitzkrieg is obscure. It was never used in the title of a doctrine or handbook of the German army or air force. Both used the term to mean a swift strategic knock-out, rather than a new military doctrine or approach to war. The first article deals primarily with supplies of food and materiel in wartime, the term blitzkrieg is used with reference to German efforts to win a quick victory in the First World War but is not associated with the use of armoured, mechanised or air forces. It argued that Germany must develop self-sufficiency in food, because it might again prove impossible to deal a swift knock-out to its enemies, the author vaguely suggests that a massive strategic air attack might hold out better prospects but the topic is not explored in detail. Sternberg wrote that Germany was not prepared economically for a long war and he did not go into detail about tactics or suggest that the German armed forces had evolved a radically new operational method. His book offers scant clues as to how German lightning victories might be won, in English and other languages, the term had been used since the 1920s. It was later applied to the bombing of Britain, particularly London, the German popular press followed suit nine months later, after the fall of France in 1940, hence although the word had been used in German, it was first popularized by British journalism

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Deep operation
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The concept of deep operations was a national strategy, tailored to the economic, cultural and geopolitical position of the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of several failures or defeats in the Russo-Japanese War, First World War and Polish–Soviet War and this new approach considered military strategy and tactics, but also introduced a new intermediate level of military art, operations. The Soviet Union was one of the first countries to officially distinguish the level of military thinking which occupied the position between strategy and tactics. Using these templates, the Soviets developed the concept of deep battle, Deep operations had two phases, the tactical deep battle, followed by the exploitation of tactical success, known as the conduct of deep battle operations. The goal of an operation was to inflict a decisive strategic defeat on the enemys logistical abilities and render the defence of their front more difficult, impossible—or, indeed. Unlike most other doctrines, deep battle stressed combined arms cooperation at all levels, strategic, operational, Russian military thinking had changed little over the course of three centuries prior to the 1920s. The Russian Empire had kept pace with its enemies and allies, after the Russian Revolution, the new Bolshevik regime sought to create an entirely new military system that reflected the Bolshevik revolutionary spirit. The new Red Army combined the old and new methods, once this had been achieved, the Soviets turned their attention to solving the problem of military operational mobility. Primary advocates of this development included Alexander Andreyevich Svechin, Mikhail Frunze and they promoted the development of military scientific societies and they identified groups of talented officers. Many of these entered the Soviet Military Academy during Tukhachevskys tenure as its commandant in 1921–1922. Others came later, including particularly Nikolai Efimovich Varfolomeev and Vladimir Triandafillov, in the aftermath of the wars with Japan and Poland several senior Soviet Commanders called for a unified military doctrine. The most prominent was Mikhail Frunze, the call prompted opposition by Leon Trotsky. Frunze position eventually found favour with the elements that had experienced the poor command. This turn of events prompted Trotskys replacement by Frunze in January 1925, the nature of this new doctrine was to be political. The Soviets were to fuse the military with the Bolshevik ideal and this would define the nature of war for the Soviet Union. The Soviets believed their most likely enemy would be the capitalist states of the west they had to defend themselves against before and that such a conflict was unavoidable. The nature of war raised four major questions, Would the next war be won in one decisive campaign or would it be a long struggle of attrition. Should the Red Army be primarily offensive or defensive, would the nature of battle be fluid or static

38.
Maneuver warfare
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Maneuver warfare, or manoeuvre warfare, is a military strategy that advocates attempting to defeat the enemy by incapacitating their decision-making through shock and disruption. Methods of war stand on a continuum between maneuver warfare and attrition warfare, the focus on achieving victory through killing or capturing the enemy, Maneuver warfare advocates recognize that all warfare involves both maneuver and attrition. Maneuver warfare concepts have historically been stressed by militaries that are smaller, more cohesive, the idea of using rapid movement to keep an enemy off balance is as old as war itself. However, changing technology, such as the development of cavalry and mechanized vehicles, has led to increased interest in the concepts of maneuver warfare, Military orthodoxy believes that with some exceptions, most battles between established armies have historically been fought based on an attrition warfare strategy. Closer examination, however, reveals that the view is not universally held, attrition warfare tends to use rigidly centralized command structures that require little or no creativity or initiative from lower-level leadership. Maneuver warfare doctrine sees styles of warfare as a spectrum with attrition warfare, in attrition warfare, the enemy is seen as a collection of targets to be found and destroyed. Attrition warfare exploits maneuver to bring to bear firepower to destroy enemy forces, Maneuver warfare, on the other hand, exploits firepower and attrition on key elements of opposing forces. Instead, in warfare, the destruction of certain enemy targets is combined with isolation of enemy forces. Bypassing and cutting off enemy strongpoints often results in the collapse of that strongpoint even where the damage is minimal. Firepower, which is used primarily to destroy as many forces as possible in attrition warfare, is used to suppress or destroy enemy positions at breakthrough points during maneuver warfare. Infiltration tactics by conventional or special forces may be used extensively to cause chaos, Leonhard summarizes maneuver warfare theory as preempt, dislocate, and disrupt the enemy as alternatives to destruction of enemy mass through attrition warfare. Clarification of the Clausewitzian center of gravity concept in maneuver warfare terms suggests the question, is a COG the source of strength or the critical vulnerability. The issue can be resolved using the game of chess as a model, is the Queen or the King the opposing players COG, once the opposing players King is knocked off, it does not matter how many other chess pieces are taken. Since tempo and initiative are so critical to the success of maneuver warfare, command structures tend to be more decentralized, with more tactical freedom given to lower-level unit leaders. The decentralized command structure allows on the unit leaders, while still working within the guidelines of commanders overall vision. War theorist Martin van Creveld identifies six main elements of warfare, Tempo. Schwerpunkt, the center of effort, or striking the enemy at the place at the right time. According to van Creveld, ideally, a spot that is vital and weakly defended

British 64 Pounder Rifled Muzzle-Loaded (RML) Gun on a Moncrieff disappearing mount, at Scaur Hill Fort, Bermuda. This is a part of a fixed battery, meant to protect against over-land attack and to serve as coastal artillery.

The U.S. and USSR conducted hundreds of nuclear tests, including the Desert Rock exercises at the Nevada Test Site, USA, pictured above during the Korean War to familiarize their soldiers with conducting operations and counter-measures around nuclear detonations, as the Korean War threatened to expand.